Absolutely adored this, in all its ridiculousness. Playing like a Brosnan-era Bond film (with its own version of SPECTRE) on crack - or more accurately, nitro - this thankfully does away with connections to the mainline F&F franchise and sets up its own thing - all for the better.
The real star of the show is the script (or more specifically, dialogue) and the cast that exchange all these barbs: The Rock and Statham are as hilarious together as you've hoped, Kirby is *fantastic*, Elba and everyone else is hamming it up and clearly having fun in the best way - and a lot of it appears to be thanks to Drew Pearce specifically (and Leitch's Deadpool pedigree, though when I saw Pearce's name in the credits I went 'aaaaahhh') - remember when this was supposed to be a Shane Black joint? Can really tell... There's a sense of self-awareness that gels a whole lot better than the latter F&F films, and the drama/backstories...actually...work, like, earnestly? Unlike the soapiness of Diesel's stuff.
But what Leitch brings here is a suitably ridiculous style that attempts to bring the bling and the action of his previous works all together (and you can extend that to this film as a whole being a very admirable attempt to do that) - very much succeeds at the former, with the latter I did miss the uncut and clean fight choreography which defined John Wick and Atomic Blonde, tough to adapt to PG13 evidently.
Give me 8 of these movies in a row please and thanks Universal. I think they honestly have something interesting here in the spy franchise world - a 90s styled, star-studded and gloriously OTT counterpoint to the seriousness of Bond, crazy real stunts of Mission: Impossible, and the comic-bookyness of Kingsman that seems to, on reflection, properly fulfil the direction that the main Fast films have been going in. In other words, get these two to space and not Diesel.